Discovery Middle School Shooting

A school shooting happened today at Discovery Middle School in Alabama. One ninth grade student at Discovery Middle school is said to have shot another ninth grader in the head. The victim, 14-year-old Todd Brown, was taken to a local hospital, and his condition is unknown at this time.

In Philadelphia we have had non-school related shootings outside of schools, but we have not experienced the tragedy of a school shooting. Who can forget the 10-year-old who was shot outside his school in 2004? We also remember the heroic crossing guard who was also shot when she helped students get out of the line of fire instead of running for cover herself.

We did come close back to a tragic school shooting in 2007 when a student at Whitemarsh High School was discovered to have a Columbine style plan to kill other students.

In 2006, a young man shot himself at school, but he actually fired a warning shot so that other students would not be hurt.

The way to protect our children from shootings at school is to teach children to solve problems without violence, to identify at-risk kids who might have anger issues and to make sure the lines of communication and trust between students and authority figures are strong. It’s true that these things are hard, maybe even impossible. However for the sake of our kids, we have to try.

Tonight we are thinking about a ninth grader who was shot at his school, a place that is supposed to be safe. We also think of our own children and wonder how we can keep this from happening again.